We recently switched the Morning Buzz from a news roundup format, to an original content format. This was a big change for us, because for a long time, sharing the morning’s local government news headlines was something that ELGL took a lot of pride in. And, after we made the switch, we heard from some of our members that they would miss our news aggregator service:
Data-driven decisions are always great. But we can’t be robotic in all thinking. An aggregation of #localgov news serves a higher purpose.
— Sam Taylor (@LocalSamT) July 30, 2017
I will give it some more thought & also check some automation features that might make this possible for @ELGL50 (& news nerds like us)….
— Kirsten Wyatt (@kowyatt) July 30, 2017
That Twitter conversation also included ELGL’s good friend Michael Grass with Route Fifty.
Earlier today, we hopped on the phone with Michael and hashed out an interesting idea to aggregate the local gov news that ELGL members and Route Fifty readers want to share. It’s a pretty simple and cool concept:
- When you come across an interesting story on social media, share it using the hashtag #LocalGovWire.
- We’ll compile the #LocalGovWire stories and share them in our blogs, newsletters, and social posts so you can read the stories that your fellow ELGL members and local gov friends are sharing.
It’s not exactly the same as a carefully curated list of stories each morning, but it does harness ELGL members and Route Fifty readers collective curiosity.
Try using the hashtag over the next couple of weeks and we’ll see how this experiment goes, and what our members and readers think of this approach, as well as the different ways we’ll compile the links from the hashtag into bite-sized reader formats.